French Language Day 2019 is on Wednesday, March 20, 2019: French language problem?

Wednesday, March 20, 2019 is French Language Day 2019. UN French Language Day is observed annually on March 20. The event was established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010 to seeking "to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six of its official working languages throughout the organization".

UN French Language Day is observed annually on March 20. The event was established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2010 to seeking "to celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as well as to promote equal use of all six of its official working languages throughout the organization".

The Sorbonne has intensive French as a second language courses. You can take them in summer and throughout the school year. Just as students who want to study at American universities may need to take English as a second language courses for a year (or maybe even a little more) before they start university study in their majors, you would probably need to do that. You might want to try out a summer program to see how you like it. (After all, it would be good for your French even if you decided not to continue in France.) It *is* very hard to adjust to both linguistic and cultural changes, but lots of people do it!

The website for the Sorbonne courses in French:

There's a link at the top if you want to read in English. However, the information in French is a bit more complete.

Another program in the lovely town of Annecy:

EDIT: I agree with all the others who encourage you to listen to "real" French as much as possible. One website that is good because, below each video, it has close to a transcript of the brief news clip:

You can choose the language you want in a drop-down menu at the top (in case you want to see / read the same news video in English). There are multiple news stories/videos, and they change daily.

It's also good to practice *speaking* in French. While I haven't tried LiveMocha, I ran into a high school student who could speak and understand *slow* French. I was very surprised at her level. She said it was due to the conversation partner she had found through the LiveMocha website. (Some things on the webpage you have to pay for, but not the ability to find a conversation partner.)

A really excellent program, but only for those who have a very advanced level of French (no English with this one) is C dans l'air:

Has the French language...?

Surprisingly few! (Although ironically, the words "France" and "French" are Germanic in origin).

The modern day French are descendants of the Franks, a Germanic tribe that moved into the region roughly 2,000 years ago. Though Germanic, they adopted the vulgar (or local) Latin of the inhabitants living there and the language eventually morphed into modern-day French!

So though the French are descendants of Germanic tribes, their language has few influences from German languages.

(As a side note, French is a Romance language, meaning it came from the Roman people (it has nothing to do with love!), whereas German is a Germanic language. Whereas they both come from the same Indo-European family of languages (which includes English, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Persian, Hindi, Urdu, etc.), they are from different branches of this family. That's not to say there could not be adopted words (English, for instance, is a Germanic and not a Romance language, though many of our words come from French...this is due to the Norman invasion of 1066 which introduced many French words into English, but kept the grammar basics and roots intact from the Germanic).

What was the FIRST day in your language class like?Whichever language, idc,german japanese french spanish etc?

My first day of French class last year one thing I remember is my French teacher coming in an muttering at herself in French and then starting to talk to us in French like we had any idea what she was saying. However, I really, really enjoyed the class and learned a lot.

One piece of advice in a new language class is always try to use your language skills. Even if its just simple things, the teachers really appreciate it.